Grover Norquist - Views On Government

Views On Government

Norquist favors dramatically reducing the size of the government. He has been noted for his widely quoted quip: "I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Journalist William Greider quotes him saying his goal is to bring America back to what it was "up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that." When asked by journalist Steven Kroft about the goal of chopping government "in half and then shrink it again to where we were at the turn of the century" before social security and medicare, Norquist replied, "We functioned in this country with government at eight percent of GDP for a long time and quite well."

Some smaller government advocates argue that Norquist's "obsession with tax revenue" is actually counterproductive with respect to minimizing the size of government, however. Although the Americans for Tax Reform mission statement is "The government's power to control one's life derives from its power to tax. We believe that power should be minimized", critics at the Cato Institute have argued that "holding the line on taxes constrains only one of the four tools (taxes, tax deductions, spending without taxation, and regulation) used by government to alter economic outcomes."

Norquist published Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives, in 2008. In 2012, he published Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, with John R. Lott, Jr. He has served as a monthly "Politics" columnist and contributing editor to The American Spectator.

Norquist has also called for reductions in defense spending as one way to reduce the size of government.